Yesterday I spent a good part of my day off reading a book on WWII and then watching a documentary about the same. That war still fascinates me. Not just the breadth of it, but the deception that fueled it, and how many intelligent people actually believed the lies. One of the things that scares me today is that the younger generation is no longer being taught much about it. So much so, that as I quoted a few weeks back, when asked: "70 million Americans (obviously the younger generation) did not know that Germany was our enemy in WWII." And we can be sure that if they do not even know that Germany was our enemy, they surely do not know the tactics the Nazi party (not just Hitler) used to persuade so many to do so much evil.
That's why I share today's thought. It comes from the best-selling author Andy Andrews, and is titled: "How Do You Kill 11 Million People? Why the Truth Matters More Than You Think." It is rated "PG-13" and is not for the faint-hearted. Yet I encourage you to read it -- and share it -- since I believe the old adage is true: "He who Does Not Know History Is Condemned to Repeat It." It's a well-researched and insightful little book that would take less than an hour to read. It has its sad parts, but would be well worth your time. In our era of media spin, when truth seems to matter so little to so many, and its hard to know what to believe when you see numerous quotes of reports online -- it is a sobering wake-up call. Read with caution.
"How do you kill 11 million people? Obviously, most of us have never even considered such a thing. Yet when I began to closely research our world's recent history -- the last one hundred years -- that particular question made its unsettling way into my mind. How do you kill 11 million people? 11 million. The number is so large when the word people is attached to it that it becomes almost impossible to take seriously. "Why 11 million?" you might ask. What is the significance of that number? Actually the number is 11,283,000 -- the number of people killed by Adolf Hitler between the years 1933 and 1945.
Incidentally,
that particular figure only represents institutionalized killing. It does not
include the 5,200,000 German civilians and military dead. Neither does it
include the 28,736,000 Europeans killed during World War II as a result of
Hitler's aggressive governmental policies.
Within
the same parameters, we could have used the number of Cambodians put to death
by their own government: slightly more than three million between 1975 and
1979. Three million -- from a population of eight million. We could have
used the exact figure of 61,911,000. That is the number of people who were
murdered by the government of the Soviet Union, shown by their own records,
between the years 1917 and 1987. But only 54,767,000 of the men, women and
children put to death by the Communist Party were officially Soviet citizens.
(That's almost 2500 per day for 70 years.)
During
World War I, the highest leadership council of Turkey's Young Turk government
decided to exterminate every Armenian in the country, whether a soldier
fighting for the government or a pregnant woman... all two million of
them. We could have used that number instead. Or, three million in North
Korea, more than a million in Mexico, Pakistan, and the Baltic States. The
choices available, and numbers of dead killed at the hands of their own
government, are staggering. And in other places around the world, they are just
getting started.
But
for our purpose, let's focus on the number that is the most well known to us --
the eleven million human beings exterminated by the Nazi regime... To be
absolutely clear, the method a government employs in order to do the actual
killing is not in question. We already know the variety of tools used to
accomplish mass murder. Neither do we need to consider the mind-set of those
deranged enough to conceive and carry out a slaughter of innocents. History has
provided ample documentation of the damage done to societies by megalomaniacal
psychopaths or sociopaths.
What
we need to understand is how eleven million people allow themselves to be
killed? Why, for month after month and year after year, did millions of
intelligent human beings -- guarded by a relatively few Nazi soldiers --
willingly load their families into tens of thousands of cattle cars to be
transported by rail to one of the many death camps scattered across Europe?...
The Answer is
breathtakingly simple. And it is a method still being used by some elected leaders to achieve various goals
today... You lie to them.
According
to testimony provided under oath at the Nuremberg Trials (including specific
declarations made in court on January 3, 1946, by former SS officers), the act
of transporting the Jews to death camps posed a particular challenge for the
man who had been named operational manager of the Nazi genocide -- Adolf
Eichmann. "The Master" as he was known, was directed by written
order in December of 1941 to implement The Final Solution. Eichmann went about
the task as if he were the president of a multinational corporation. He set
ambitious goals, recruited enthusiastic staff, and monitored the progress. He
charted what worked, and what didn't, and changed policy accordingly. Eichmann
measured achievement in quotas filled. Success was rewarded. Failure was
punished.
An
intricate web of lies, to be delivered in stages, was designed to ensure the
cooperation of the condemned (but unknowing) Jews. First, as barbed wire
fences were erected, encircling entire neighborhoods, Eichmann or his
representatives met with Jewish leaders to assure them that the physical
restrictions being placed upon their community (in what later became known as
ghettos) were temporary necessities of war. As long as they cooperated, he told
them, no hard would come to those inside the fence. Second, bribes were
taken from the Jews in the promise of better living conditions The bribes
convinced the Jews that the situation was only temporary... After all, they
reasoned, why would the Nazi's accept bribes if they only intend to kill us and
take everything anyway? These first two stages of deception were
conducted to prevent uprisings or even escape.
Finally, Eichmann would appear
before a gathering of the entire ghetto. Accompanied by an entourage of no more
than thirty local men and officers of his own -- many unarmed -- he addressed
the crowd in a strong, clear voice. According to sworn statements, these
were very likely his exact words:
"Jews:
At last it can be reported to you that the Russians are advancing on our
eastern front. I apologize for the hasty way we brought you into our
protection. Unfortunately, there was little time to explain. You have nothing
to worry about. We want only the best for you. You will leave here shortly and
be sent to very fine places indeed. You will work there, your wives will
stay at home, and your children will go to school. You will have wonderful
lives. We will all be terribly crowded on the trains, but the journey is short.
Men? Please keep your families together and board the rail-cars in an orderly
manner. Quickly now, my friends, we must hurry!"
The
Jewish husbands and fathers were relieved by the explanation and comforted by
the fact that there weren't more armed soldiers. They helped their families
onto the rail-cars... each was packed with no less than one hundred human beings
and quickly padlocked. At that moment they were lost. The trains rarely stopped
until well inside the gates of Auschwitz."
Though all the blame
often gets laid on Hitler, he did not act alone. He had a very intelligent and
capable crew of master planners with him -- planners who were very gifted at
the art of controlling the media, deceiving a nation, playing on people's
national pride, and silencing all opposition. In a day when we have less and
less ability to control what we see, or the agenda and message behind it, a little
glance back at recent history can be helpful.
As Andrews stated
regarding his whether or not he had a "political agenda" for writing
the book: "Of
course. Here's mine. I want America's present and future to live up to
America's core values as written by our Founding Fathers and set forth in the
constitution. In addition, I want the public to vigilantly hold them
accountable for doing so."
I would encourage one
more thing we need to hold people in positions of power accountable to.
It's found in the Bible: "You Shall Not
Bear False Witness." For when truth doesn't matter,
as history shows, people's lives are at risk.
In the Service of Jesus, Pastor Jeff
